SEVEN DAYS YOUNGER THAN ME

March 2003

Tony Blair was born on 6 May 1953. I was born on 29 April 1953. That makes me seven days older than the Prime Minister, the most powerful person in the land. Seven days older than the only person who stands between us and war. I learnt about this age difference some days after the 1997 election. It came as a shock. Not that I think I look any younger than Blair. It's just that until then all prime ministers had been from generations older than myself and that seemed to be the natural order of things.
I think I naively assumed that once my generation came of age for running the country everything would be a lot better. As teenagers we would have watched the same TV news, read the same books, bought the same copies of the NME, listened to the same records, and suffered the same fashions. We would have both known how stupid America's involvement in Vietnam was, both been grateful the sun had finally set on our empire.
So once I got over the shock of this age thing I began to feel good that the world could now start being a safer and fairer place to live. Well, of course he had to wear a suit, smile for the camera, talk in that patronising way - it came with the job. After the initial thrill of September 11 when the whole vague notion of a war on terrorism started to be the driving force, I found myself defending Blair, understood why he had to have the ear of the then-recently (un)elected President Bush, who effortlessly represented everything I loathe about America.
Sometime late in 2001, I began to regularly indulge myself in a strange private fantasy. The fantasy takes place circa early 1970 in the first-year sixth form common room at Kingswood Comprehensive, Corby, where I had been a pupil. Now, as well as Eddie McKinnon, Mick Fahey, Pete McMahon and the rest, there was Tony Blair along with all of us arguing about whether it was the King Crimson or the Van Der Graph Generator LP next to go on the record player, and who should replace Harold Wilson as the leader of the Labour Party. Except Tony was always trying to put on his copy of Free's Fire & Water LP, which we all thought was rubbish.
There is a contradiction in this fantasy: in it Tony and myself are both teenagers and at the same time men in our late 40s. He tells me what's really going on between him and Bush and I get to tell him where he is going wrong, what with me being that week older than him and having a more mature appreciation of music and a deeper understanding of the Labour movement. I mean, I went to the 1969 Isle of Wight Pop Festival and he didn't. Nothing else happens in the fantasy other than Blair saying, 'You know, Bill, I think you are right.' Then it's back to singing along with Twenty First Century Schizoid Man.
In reality, Blair went to Fettes, Edinburgh's equivalent to going to Westminster School in London, a long way in every sense from a Corby comp. There is nothing else aside from our birth dates in our subsequent careers and lives that could conceivably thought to be parallel.
As things were beginning to hot up around the globe, I became clearly aware that it was now my generation that was going to be held responsible by history for what was happening right now. And I was more than sure that what I had to say on anything critical or crucial was not going to be heeded even by my own children, let alone the premier of the fourth richest country in the world.
Out of this sense of futility was born my Silent Protest idea which I developed into a pack of cards. This is what is written on the back of the flip-top box that the pack comes in.

Silent protest is a card game.
The aims of this game are:
To go a whole day without uttering a single word.
To bring about the end of the war.

HOW TO PLAY
First, you must believe that the war is both wrong and stupid. Second, you must think that no matter how passionate your beliefs or how rational your arguments about how wrong and stupid this war is, nobody who has any say in its continuation is going to listen to you, let alone act on your passionate beliefs or rational arguments.
Third, use a pack of Silent Protest cards as easy-to-handle props to help get you through the day without saying a word.
There are fifty-two cards in the pack. Forty-eight of the cards have short statements (eg because I want to), short questions (eg where is the lavatory?) and useful single words (eg yes, no, tea, coffee, today, tomorrow, forever, harder and faster). There are 2 blank cards that you can use to write your own useful words on, plus a pair of jokers, one says Me the other You.

WHEN? You can play this game on any day you like. Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday would do, but we suggest tomorrow is best. It gives you just enough time to work out your strategies but not enough to start thinking the whole thing is a bit silly and that the makers of this card game are only out to exploit the misery of others for their own monetary gain and warped desire for infamy.
If you earn your living by working in a call centre, as a station platform announcer, a doctor's receptionist or any similar occupation, you may have to wait until your first free day before having a go.

HOW OFTEN? You can play Silent Protest as often as you like or until the war is well and truly over. The more you play the better you get. The more you play the safer the world becomes.

WHICH WAR? Whichever war you want to stop: the one in your family or bedroom; the one at work or the war in a far-flung land. You choose.
WARNING: NO MONEY FROM THE SALE OF THESE CARDS GOES TO CHARITY.

These cards started to become available in a number of bookshops in late autumn 2002. It didn't look like they were having much effect and I was beginning to get nervous. When I get nervous there is a number of courses of actions I take. One is to resort to graffiti, another is to start walking out the shapes of giant letters on the streets of whatever city I find myself in. This is something I've done at various times over the past 30 years. I've recently learnt that this is not so uncommon an activity but as yet I don't know if it has been given a syndrome-type name.
I bought myself a large fold-out A-Z map of the capital. On it I traced out the outlines of the 13 letters used to spell 'Silent Protest' in block capitals (Trade Gothic Bold Condensed 20), then within the outline of each letter I worked out my proposed route. The week before last I started walking 'S I L E N T' above the Thames; 'P R O T E S T' will be mainly below it. So far I've got S, I, L, E, N and T done. Next week I start on 'P R O T E S T'.
Each letter can take up to four hours to do. I only do one letter on any one day. I have to find the time for this activity between my more pressing responsibilities of being a father and earning a living. It usually happens that once I start doing something I'm unable to stop it from evolving in several directions at the same time. Me walking the streets of London on my own isn't going to raise awareness of a pack of cards with anyone but myself. For me it's almost a private ritual. Mind you, if you want to have a go in your part of the country, do so. Or if there is any other way you think you can use this Silent Protest thing as a starting point, feel free.
Although I've no interest in London in an Iain Sinclair sort of way - streets are just streets to me and all pavements look pretty much the same - but I have to admit liking to read many of the various forms of sidewalk advertising that confront me as I trudge along. Nothing much happens on these walks. No romantic encounters or out-of-body experiences. The highlight so far has been Finsbury Park mosque being stormed by the police as I tramped past.
I like to take a pack of Silent Protest with me on each of these walks. The plan is to then leave the pack of cards in a telephone box or other suitable location in the hope they might be found by an unsuspecting member of the public and that this discovery may have some positive influence on their life. I've always liked that random thing. I left a pack in a phone box across the road from the Finsbury Park mosque.
Over the past few years I've developed a habit of taking photos with an automatic-everything easy-to-use camera. Any time I'm up to something new, out comes the camera. The pictures I take are usually unpeopled and close-ups of things I'm doing or things I'm looking at. A theme often evolves without me being aware of it until I get the photos back from Boots. The theme that seems to be evolving so far on this walk in London is the above-mentioned adverts and notices.
At the end of each walk I'm knackered. There's not much of that elation thing that I understand people get after they have been to the gym. The trouble with doing something like this is that it gives your mind time to wander. You start having thoughts like 'So, after I've done London I'll do Baghdad, then Washington' but how do you explain that to the family? On the train home I read in the paper that Tony Blair is just back from having a chat with Bush in Washington, to do his spot in the Commons before popping across the Channel for a get together with Chirac, then heading up to Newcastle to be interrogated by Jeremy Paxman. And I think, well I've fucked it. Even if I walked out 'Silent Protest' on every sodding city on earth it wouldn't stop one bomb from falling.
And when I see him on the telly he looks a lot more than a week younger than me and he can hold a lot more information in his head than I have ever been able to and he still sounds like he believes it and can almost persuade me he's right.
'Trust me, Bill.'
'I want to trust you Tony, but I get this funny feeling and anyway Paul Rodgers is a shit singer.'
This morning I decided to try and write down what it is I've been up to. By putting these words on paper I was hoping to see if there was anything in my actions that had any use. The conclusion is usually that any activity born out of the creative impulse is of little practical use to your fellow man other than as a vague form of entertainment, a mere distraction from reality. This conclusion is wrong; responding to our creative impulses may at times be the best thing we as human beings can do for each other.
My generation may have learnt that protest songs didn't stop the Vietnam war; yours might have learnt that Band Aid didn't stop famine in Africa. Don't let that stop us from using creativity as a strategy for a better world. This morning on the table in the Safeway's coffee shop in Aylesbury where I usually start my working day, was a copy of the Daily Mirror. I picked it up to read the reports of the Newcastle-Arsenal match and the Manchester derby. Once that was done I flicked through the rest, stopping off at Tony Parsons' column. His opening sentence went like this: 'If I see one more fading celebrity coming out against the war with Iraq, then I fear that I will feel like bombing Baghdad myself.' The closing sentence to the column was this: 'But the next time I get a pious finger wagged at me by some pacifist politician or clapped-out old pop star then I'm going to give it some serious thought.' So maybe I've got it wrong. Me putting out a pack of cards and walking the words 'Silent Protest' over London's streets will not have zero effect but the direct opposite effect to what I promised on the pack. It may, in fact, be the final straw that will make Tony Parsons go and bomb Baghdad himself.
And as for the seven-day age difference between our leader and myself, in less than three months from now we will both have turned 50 and at least one of us could be held responsible for a turn in the course of history that we may all live or die to regret.